It’s time to leave Bill English alone

by Jake Quinn

Bill English (Photo NZPA)

It’s time to leave Bill English alone. Labour and the press gallery have had a good run with it. Bill’s been embarrassed, he’s paid some money back and the issue will always slightly affect his credibility as Finance Minister. But enough is enough.

Bill’s home in Dipton has been in his family for 120 years. It’s on English Rd. It’s full of his stuff and he is the local MP. Some time ago he decided to have his family reside in Wellington so they could be closer together – his kids go to school there and his wife practices medicine there – it’s an honourable thing to do for someone planning a life in politics.

Bill has to maintain two residences because he has two homes, two rates bills, and everything else that goes with it.

MP’s need to be ultra careful and conservative when it comes to what benefits and kickbacks they receive. The public mood for lynchings is high, especially after the British MPs’ expenses scandal which led to numerous resignations.

Bill should have been more careful so deserves some of the criticism he has received. However, successive Speakers of the House, from both major parties, have signed off on his arrangements and the legal buck stops with them.

What’s more, his being in breach, if he is, is a technicality. He’s only in trouble because the allowance is called an ‘out of town MP’ allowance. If it was called the ‘MP’s who have a home in their electorate but choose to spend pretty much all of their time in Wellington’ allowance then there wouldn’t be an issue.

The issue of him changing the ownership of his Karori home to a family trust that he is not a beneficiary of (in order to receive an extra taxpayer funded kickback) does seem a little fishy though. But Bill has taken enough of a public flogging for this.

It is time to move on. There’s a tsunami on the way for christ’s sake😉

Update: Do read the comments thread, there are some rather good responses in there

17 Comments to “It’s time to leave Bill English alone”

I tend to disagree. By most accounts English has maintained two residences for longer than he’s been in Parliament, moving his family to Wellington while he was working at Treasury. How long the Dipton house has been in his family and whether the street is named after some forebear is completely irrelevant to the question of whether his primary residence is a place he visits on electorate days or the place he and his family live most of the time.

And therein lies the problem for Bill and why he absolutely should not be left alone. He’s a Finance Minister who has been calling for significant cuts and belt tightening at the same time as fighting to retain a distinctly dubious entitlement. The fact that in the end he rather petulantly blamed the system for not being able to manage his circumstances should speak volumes about his level of remorse. Given his cynicism, I’m inclined to think your sympathy for him is misplaced.

The issue speaks to his credibility and it speaks to his judgement. I really think the lack of any moral high ground on matters of fiscal rectitude is a significant problem for a National Finance Minister during a recession. It’s the role of the gallery and the opposition to highlight that problem.

And they have. I don’t disagree that this issue has damaged him, as it should have. But it’s time now to focus on some more important issues.

New Zealand has a tendency to exert huge wads of energy into issues like this that are embarrassing for politicians, painter gate, benson-pope-tennis-balls etc, all while we pass legislation that will subsidize polluting farmers and emitters for the next half century and send combat troops into wars that are being lost in regions that should never have been meddled with.

Jake I’m not sure whether you’re being naive or just idealistic. I think it would be great if people gave a toss about the detail of legislation being passed, particularly all this legislation that’s being rushed through under urgency. But maybe because they’ve too many other distractions in modern life, maybe because they became disenchanted with politics and politicians, or maybe because they’ve been conditions by politicians and media… the NZ public are not engaged with politics at a detailed level.

National exposed this to brutal effect over the last six years in its attacks on political figures, its attacks on government policy (light bulbs and shower heads), and in its own stripped-down bullet point manifesto approach. I think it would be really swell if the opposition could kick-start a renaissance in popular political engagement, but I think that’s a fantasy. The reality is they need to pick populist angles to attack National lawmaking and they need to maximise the political leverage that opportunities like Bill’s missteps offer.

The painting incident, the speeding incident and numerous other tools National used against Clark should have had limited shelf lives. But the evidence suggests that’s no longer the reality for senior figures in the beltway. I don’t see why English should be treated any differently.

You make some good points Sufi Safari. Kiwis are by and large disconnected from any detail of legislation and I’m of the view that frankly sagas like the one we are discussing only makes this disconnection from politics even worse.

National was supremely effective in its attacks on Labour’s policies that it could label nanny state, and you are correct that the left needs to also pick populist issues to attack the government with.

For instance, it might turn out that National only wants to mine one tiny little spot on DOC land, but i would expect Labour to launch an all out assault implying that the tory’s are mining up the whole conservation estate – the public will be outraged.

In terms of Bill English being treated any differently, if i was blogging during painter-gate or speed-gate i would have made the same comment; that the issue has had its mileage and that it’s time to move on to more important issues.

I think it’s important that one is consistent in their views, regardless of whether the politician they are criticising is of the left or right.

Jake. I’m afraid that I disagree. Not for the facts of the matter, which I tend to agree with you on, but for removing the political effect of the tactic.

The right have been pioneering this type of innuendo political attack for the last 5 or 6 years. The most extreme version was the political lynching of Winston last year. I2 should know, he has been in the thick of it.

Problem is that when you get one side doing it for political effect, then the only way to educate them that it is a bloody stupid idea is to do it back – except do it better. So we should be expecting to put a NACT politician on the rack every month of so and stretching them as we insert cautionary spikes of political pain. So far we seem to be doing it pretty well to schedule. Of course the NACT politicians have been assisting a lot with their born-to-rule attitudes.

It does make government drop to a grinding halt as far too attention gets concentrated on defensive operations – exactly what happened to Labour. It will be made to happen to NACT and it is better for the country to do it as hard as possible for the shortest time. That essentially means that you don’t show any mercy.

Having a barely functional government is an issue (but this one looks like that anyway). However that it is less of an issue in the longer term than allowing partisans of the right to think that this bloody stupid political tactic is without consequences.

I and others referred to this as the 1000 cuts treatment when it was applied to Labour. We warned the wingnuts that the same tactic could and would be used on them for the whole of this term. Now we’re doing it. Where in past terms we’d have let some of these stupidities slide, many of us on the left are pushing them to the extremes. It is the only way to penetrate to the mindless political operators that using wingnut operations like SST, Kiwiblog, the roundtable, the brethren, etc to run dogwhistle bullshit is counter-productive.

Of course it is easier for the left to do anyway – they have many more creative people and less reliant on money. Hell it is fun to do.

Sufi – maybe it’s you who’s being idealistic. The reason that Paintergate et al continued to gain column inches was that those involved refused to admit any culpability. English to his credit, whilst continuing to insist that he hasn’t done anything illegal, has accepted that his actions have looked bad, and has reacted accordingly.

Lynn – I make no apologies for contributing to the exposure of Winston Peters’ hypocrisy. He told his faithful followers that NZ First didn’t accept money from “big business”, when it became patently obvious that the party had. That he later misled the Privileges Committee added fuel to the fire. Oh, and not everyone on the right is a “wingnut”, a term of endearment which you seem particularly fond of😉

I2: Yeah but the point with Winston and almost all of the other ‘scandals’ beloved by NACT supporters over the last few years is that they really didn’t amount to much on the policy side. In fact there wasn’t any real content in any of them. So you can’t really object when the left follow the same attack lines. Double Dipton as you say has clung to the legalities. This means that he will keep making himself a target in exactly the same manner as Winston or Benson Pope.

[…] surprised and impressed. Former Labour Press Secretary Jake Quinn has done a fair and balanced post on Bill English. He has just gone up hugely in my estimation. It’s time to leave Bill English alone. Labour and […]

I think Jake’s right: the question of Bill’s entitlements certainly had legs. For a while there it almost looked like it could sprint away with the while show. He left damaged from most of his Question Time sessions, and gave Labour tremendous momentum in its management of the House. But now the fun’s over, and poor Bill’s taking the flak for his decision to creatively apply one of the many allowances-slash-benefits MPs receive, and it’s just not fair.

So the question really becomes whether or not we think the role of member of Parliament is noble enough to merit a special allowance to live semi-permanently or permanently in Wellington. I tend to think it’s past its use-by date. Bill’s allowance, for example, goes toward a house he will eventually own (well, a house that his [i]trust[/i] will eventually own…), an interesting application of the public purse if ever there were one.

I think the waters in which allowances sit are muddy enough and I wonder more and more about their relevance full-stop. Exhausting though it may be, Bill could actually commute to and from his 120 year old family homestead in Dipton. Air New Zealand’s reach is that far. His wife could be a local GP and his children could continue a [no doubt] proud tradition at the local schools.

Being an MP is about sacrifice; that’s what’s [i]noble[/i] about the role. It’s about travelling long distances because you need to. Getting on and off planes becomes almost second nature to MPs – and their sacrifice in this respect is rewarded with Koru Club membership.

Allowances that support MPs in their mission of traversing the countryside to spread the gospel like early day evangelists are necessary. When they’re away from their ordinary residence, a hotel should be provided; cars to and from places; the ability to ‘keep in touch’ through Blackberries (is it one Blackberry; two Blackberries?). But if they choose to live in Wellington then they should accept the burden that comes with that choice, and like any other person should take the hit in their own back pocket.

No way. Now is the time to put more pressure on. Sure, the actualy tweaking of the trust and petty avarice of the extra $20 so taxpayers can pick up after his kids are minor, but forcing the resignation of the Finance Minister would be a major victory.

DPF is being too cute on this one – He was in boots and all during labour/support party screw ups and sometimes rightly so. However you reap what you sew and now the boots on the other foot he’s going to have to take the rough with the smooth (see what I did there??)

DPF feasted for months on these types of issues when his party was in opposition and to see him screaming no fair either makes him a bald faced hypocrite or a blinded partisan hack. I think he needs to take a deep breath and think how he might have approached this issue if this was Cullen doing the double dipping.